UPDATED 13:04 EST / MAY 26 2016

NEWS

Intel Capital calls off $1BN portfolio sale

Since joining the venture capital game in 1991, Intel has backed more than 1,400 startups across 57 countries and an even bigger number of segments, from software-as-a-service to healthcare automation. And according to a new blog post from the head of its investment arm, Wendell Brooks, the company plans to continue at full-throttle despite the global economic issues that have caused other funds to scale back spending.

The memo quashes speculation that Intel Capital might divest from companies that fall outside the company’s core focus areas, notably data center infrastructure, memory and the connected universe. According to the Bloomberg report that started the rumor-mill in March, Brooks’ unit was looking to sell as much as a quarter of its investment portfolio for around $1 billion. The anonymous insiders who leaked the news revealed the company even hired a bank to help find buyers. They said that the portfolio could be sold either as a whole, or in chunks carved out based on sector and geography.

But while Intel Capital’s existing lineup apparently won’t experience any major changes, Brooks’ blog post didn’t say anything about future investments. As a matter of fact, it provides strong reason to believe that the company might modify the unit’s funding strategy to better reflect its new focus areas. The executive revealed that several of his colleagues are set to change roles or leave the division as part of an effort to “streamline” its investment efforts.

For the time being, however, business seems to be continuing as usual. Brooks published his blog  post a few hours after Intel Capital was named as the lead contributor to a $20 million investment in Lightbend Inc., a development automation specalist. The startup’s open-source application promises to ease the creation of high-performance cloud workloads that require the ability to deal with sudden usage spikes.

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